Growth has never been optional for MSPs, but the reasons behind it keep multiplying. Some need to grow just to keep pace with competitors packing more into every contract. Others have one eye on an exit and know buyers pay for size. And for plenty, it comes down to economies of scale—spreading the cost of tooling, compliance, and talent across enough clients to make the numbers work.
The pressure is coming from several directions at once. Clients want more, from AI-enabled services to compliance support, while the people needed to deliver it stay scarce and expensive. And consolidation is redrawing the map: Drake Star’s Q2 2026 update shows smaller MSPs (under $1.5 million EBITDA) trading at 5–7x, while scaled platforms above $15 million command 16–18x.
So MSPs need to grow. The tricky part is doing it without overreaching.
Partnership as a growth strategy
The modern MSP stack is sprawling. Security, backup, Cloud, domains, email, monitoring, compliance, AI tooling—each layer has its own vendors, update cycles, and pricing models. Few mid-size MSPs can build deep expertise in all of it, and hiring for every gap is a fast way to watch margins disappear.
Partnership offers another route, opening doors to new verticals or regions, or letting you deliver what clients ask for without building it from scratch. MSP GLOBAL’s State of the Industry research suggests this is how MSPs increasingly see it. Among those actively partnering, revenue growth from new verticals is now the most-cited benefit (56.8%), ahead of extra capacity.
“You need to be able to think big, start small, and scale fast.”
Martijn Kamphuis, Realtime Register
Wanting to partner vs. actually doing it
Here’s the puzzle. MSPs have never felt better about collaboration. Across five waves of the survey, every attitude measure has climbed to a series high—the importance of building trust between MSPs scores 4.4 out of 5, and openness to co-selling 4.1.
Behavior hasn’t kept up. Only around a quarter of MSPs partner regularly, and the group that’s open to partnering but not doing it has grown from 25% to 36% over the past year. The biggest barrier, cited by nearly half of respondents, is trust and competitive tension.
The MSPs that do partner offer clues about what works. Of those actively partnering, 85% have at least one formal mechanism in place—most often mutual NDAs (59%), a dedicated partnership manager (46%), or formal revenue-sharing agreements (40%). Vendor ecosystems also remain the most common partners (Cloud platforms 60%, SaaS vendors 56%), well ahead of MSP-to-MSP ties (18%), likely because the commercial terms are clearer and the competitive overlap smaller.
Offer more, own less of the risk
Martijn Kamphuis, Director of Vendor Relations & Strategic Alliances at Realtime Register, argues that a broad portfolio no longer sets a provider apart: “The real difference is no longer just what you offer. The difference is how you offer it.”
Security, backup, and monitoring are available to everyone. What clients value is the provider’s advice, speed, local knowledge, and support. That shifts the question from “what should we build?” to “how do we add the right services without carrying all the risk ourselves?”
Growing your offer while managing risk does not need to be complicated:
- Start with what you already know. Your client base is full of signals—active email domains with no spoofing protection, ecommerce sites without backup or monitoring. Selling into clients who already trust you is far lower risk than chasing new ones.
- Avoid big upfront commitments. Pay-as-you-go access through aggregators and distributors lets you test a service with a handful of clients before scaling it.
- Plan your SaaS or partnership exit before you enter. As Kamphuis puts it, “you need to be able to think big, start small, and scale fast. And just as importantly, you need the freedom to stop offering a solution when it does not deliver the expected results.”
- Put it in writing. Clear revenue-sharing, data-handling, and change-in-law clauses protect both sides when circumstances shift.
- Invest in enablement. A new service is only as good as your team’s ability to sell and support it.
Opportunities don’t wait
New openings appear constantly, often with little warning. Earlier this month, the US Department of Labor suspended Microsoft and six major IT outsourcers—including Infosys, TCS, and Wipro—from the green card sponsorship program. For MSPs outside the US, that could mean easier recruitment of senior Cloud and security engineers, and US clients looking for remote delivery partners with less political exposure.
Shifts like this (and much, much smaller ones) reward MSPs that can move quickly. Those with trusted partners already in place can add capacity or capability in weeks; those without start from zero.
Trust is built face to face
If trust is the main barrier, where does it come from? MSP GLOBAL’s analysis of its survey data found that MSPs who attended the event reported significantly higher partnership rates than those who didn’t. Correlation isn’t causation—the people who show up may simply be more partnership-minded—but it fits what most of the channel already knows. It’s easier to trust someone you’ve heard speak, swapped war stories with, and argued with about AI over dinner.
NDAs and contracts formalize trust. Conversations in person are usually where it starts.
Growth without the gamble
Growth and risk management aren’t opposites. The MSPs best placed for the next few years will expand their offer deliberately—understanding their strengths, testing before committing, and choosing trusted partners and providers that empower their growth.
Thanks to Martijn Kamphuis and Realtime Register for their expertise and support in creating this article.
